Monti makes things more difficult

Not every decision from Mario Monti, Italy’s technocratic prime minister, is helpful to the European Union.

Monti doubles up as finance minister, and his decision to promote Vittorio Grilli, the head of Italy’s finance ministry, to the post of deputy finance minister has left a hole at the top of the EU’s Economic and Finance Committee (EFC), the group of senior finance ministry officials and central bank representatives that prepares meetings of the EU’s finance ministers (Ecofin).

Grilli has been EFC chairman since early March but must now step down from that post. His temporary replacement is Georges Heinrich of Luxembourg’s finance ministry, one of the EFC’s deputy chairmen.

The choice of replacement will be complicated by the decision taken on 26 October by leaders of the eurozone countries that they should set up a full-time secretariat and chairman for the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG), which prepares meetings of the Eurogroup, the finance ministers of the eurozone.

Traditionally, the EWG and EFC chairmen come from different finance ministries. The choice of EWG chairman is being linked to the choice of who should succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the Eurogroup, when his mandate expires in six months’ time. The succession planning would have been easier if Grilli had remained in place until the summer.